The
"Righteous among the Nations" of Swiss nationality

The following people of
Swiss nationality have been raised to the rank of the «Righteous among
the Nations» by the Yad Vashem memorial. The year of their nomination
is mentioned in brackets.

Emile
BARRAS (1996)
Of both Swiss and French nationality, Emile Barras saved Jews by
helpingaving them cross the Swiss border secretly. An active member of
the French Résistance, he also helped uniformed members of the Allied
armed forces cross the border.

August
BOHNY (1990)
August Bohny ran a home for children in Chambon-sur-Lignon in the
Haute-Loire from 1941 onwards, and later three homes and a model farm.
In these homes, which from 1942 onwards were supported by the Swiss Red
Cross Aid to Children, he put up Jewish children who had been removed
from internment camps in the south of France. In particular, he took in
the children sent to him from the camp of Rivesaltes by Friedel Reiter,
who was to become his wife. August Bohny successfully protected the
children in his care and managed to shield them from the round-ups of
Jews carried out in Chambon-sur-Lignon. With its hideaways and a network
of escape routes to Switzerland and Spain, the Huguenot village of
Chambon-sur-Lignon and its surroundings became a bastion ofor the
rescuinge of Jews in France. An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Jews found
refuge there, and about thirty30 inhabitants of the region (among them
the Swiss pastor Daniel Curtet), have been raised to the rank of
Righteous among the Nations.
August Bohny currently lives in Basele.

Friedel
BOHNY, née REITER (1990)
Born in Vienna in 1912, and placed with a Zurich family by the Red Cross
after the First World War I, Friedel Reiter chose the profession of
paedriatric nurse. She became involved in the Swiss Aid Cartel for Child
War Victims, which was absorbed into the Swiss Red Cross in December
1941 and took the name of Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children. A month
before, the Cartel sent Friedel Reiter to the internment camp of
Rivesaltes in the Eastern Pyrenees. She worked there until Rivesaltes’
internees wereas vacated from its internees in late 1942. Her mission
was to provide the interned children – foreigners, Jews, gypsies, and
stateless persons – with community clinic services and to hand out
supplementary food to them.

During the deportations
that began in August 1942, she shielded Jewish children from the convoys
waiting to depart, and hid them in her provisions warehouse. She then
sent them to Chambon-sur-Lignon, to a home of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to
Children run by August Bohny – who was to become her husband and with
whom she currently lives in Basele.

The Swiss nurse kept a
diary, which was published 50 years later and about which the film
director Jacqueline Veuve has made a film. On February 12, 1942, i.e.
before the deportations, she noted in her diary: "If there is one
thing I wish, it is to see the day when all these people who are
vegetating here will once again be able to live like human beings and
will recover that which distinguishes us from animals – dignity."

Friedrich
BORN (1987)
It was in April 1944 that the Bernese Friedrich Born (1903-1963) was
appointed delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
in Hungary, where he had for several years represented the Swiss Office
for Commercial Expansion. In the face of the mass killings that were
carried out with the knowledge of the whole world, the task that awaited
him was immense and many-faceted, a task that went above and beyond the
traditional ICRC delegate's mission of protecting and supporting
prisoners of war and civilian internees. He was able to benefit from the
support provided by other members of the ICRC and a local team that
consisted of up to 250 members. He worked in close cooperation with
Switzerland's Carl Lutz and Sweden's Raoul Wallenberg.

Besides providing Jews
deported into concentration camps in Hungary and those who found
themselves in the ghettos with material aid, Friedrich Born and his team
concentrated their activities on the rescuinge of children whose parents
had been deported or could no longer be found. They set up homes,
hospitals, and maternity clinics. With great difficulty, they obtained
extraterritorial status for their institutions – more than 150 of them
– where their children were gathered. Some 8,000 Jews thus benefited
from the ICRC's protection. Friedrich Born succeeded in releasing from
the big ghetto 500 children who had been placed in the big ghettothere
in violation of the ICRC protection that was their due.

He issued about 15,000 ICRC
protective letters of ICRC to all the people who were able to assert
some connection or other with the delegation and to those who held
immigration certificates to Palestine. Finally, he sent false documents
drawn up in Switzerland by Latin American consulates to their
addressees, thus again saving lives.

Charles-Jean
BOVET (1989)
A native of the Canton of Fribourg, Charles-Jean Bovet (1900-1952) was a
parish priest in the Haute-Savoie during the Second World War II. In
September of 1942 he saved the life of Bernhard Blumenkranz, the future
director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research in
Paris, by secretly helping him cross the border to Switzerland
illegally.

Paul
CALAME-ROSSET (1998)
Born in 1905, and currently living near Geneva, this architect and his
wife lived in Brussels during the Second World War II. His villa, which
was situated in the heart of a quarter inhabited by Germans, displayed a
sign saying «Swiss Property». He harboured several Jewish families
there and saved them «at the risk of his life».

Daniel
CURTET (1987)
As the pastor of the parish of Fay near Chambon-sur-Lignon in the
Haute-Loire, Daniel Curtet took an active part in the accommodatingon of
Jewish refugees amongby the families of his parish. He put some of them
up at his own residence before he couldwas able to find a host family
for them. Moreover, pPastor Curtet sent information about the hunt for
the Jews in France to Switzerland, by means of coded letters addressed
to his father, who lived in Lausanne.

Maurice
DUBOIS (1985)
In Sspring 1940 Maurice Dubois (1905-1998) from Bienne, an early player
in the international civil service, was dispatched to the maternity
hospital of Elne, the oldest child- aid institutions set up by the Swiss
in the south of France. After the military defeat of France, he provided
aid to the refugees, who were streaming towards the non-occupied zone
byin hundreds of thousands, with help from Toulouse, where he had
settled. This was primarily a matter of distributing provisions and
clothing collected in Switzerland.

He soon became responsible
for the Swiss Aid Cartel for Child War Victims in non-occupied France
and, after this organisation becamewas affiliated towith the Red Cross,
for the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children. He worked tofor the employment
of Swiss nurses in the internment camps of Gurs and Rivesaltes (Friedel
Reiter). With the help of his wife Eléonore, he also developed a
network of homes for children, notably in Montluel in the Department of
Ain, Faverges and Saint-Cergues-les-Voirons (Renée Farny) in Haute-Savoie,
and in Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Haute-Loire (August Bohny).

The castle of La Hille in
the Ariège, the most famous of the homes opened by the Dubois,
accommodated about a hundred100 Jewish children who had escaped from
Germany and Austria. Rösli Näf was its first manageress; Anne-Marie
Piguet and Sebastian Steiger, among others, worked there. On the night
of 26-27 August 1942, the French police entered La Hille and arrested 45
children in order to deport them. Alerted by Rösli Näf, Maurice Dubois
immediately went to Vichy. With the help of the Swiss legation, he
managed to get the French authorities to release the 45 children. After
the war, Maurice and Eléonore Dubois ran a guest home for former
concentration camp inmates in Adelboden.

Renée
FARNY (1992)
Renée Farny worked as a supervisor at «Feux-Follets», a home for
children that had been opened in Saint-Cergues-les-Voirons in September
1941 and been placed under the management of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to
Children. For dozens of Jewish children, this home was a hideaway, a
refuge, and the point of departure for their secret departure into
neighbouring Switzerland.

Late in 1942, Renée Farny
safeguarded the passage into Switzerland of eleven11 Jewish children
from another home of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children, La Hille
castle in the Pyrenees. However, the route was soon uncovered, and the
management of the Swiss Red Cross forced Renée Farny and the manageress
of La Hille, Rösli Näf, to leave their posts.

Harald
FELLER (1999)Born in Berne (where he is
still living) in 1913, Harald Feller joined the Federal Political
Department (now the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs) in 1939.
After Maximilian Jaeger was recalled (on 10th November 1944), and his
successor, Anton Josef Kilchmann, after him (on 12th December) the
responsibility of running the Swiss mission in Budapest fell to Harald
Feller, as ad interim Chargé d’Affaires.

The situation at that time was especially difficult and chaotic: Jews
were constantly attacked by groups of Arrow Cross (Hungarian pro-nazis)
and SS members, Soviet troops were occupying more and more of the city,
while many buildings had been destroyed and communications were almost
non-existent.

Harald Feller personally intervened, sometimes taking enormous risks,
to save more than 30 people including in particular some 20 Jews and the
Swedish Minister.

Before the Arrow Cross took power on 15th October 1944 Harald Feller
managed to send 14 Jews to safety in Switzerland. In order to do this he
had to obtain the necessary papers and ensure that the people and their
belongings would be protected. Two were in the concentration camp at
Kistarcsa and were likely to be deported. Feller managed to get them out
of the camp. For 6 Jewish women of Swiss origin the situation was
particularly delicate. They had married Hungarian Jews and thereby lost
their Swiss nationality. Furthermore they were in Jewish houses, and
could not benefit from diplomatic protection. Thanks to a new provision
in Swiss law, however, women who had formerly been Swiss and were in
grave danger could recover their former nationality. Harald Feller went
to extreme lengths to obtain the necessary papers for them to leave the
Jewish houses and return to Switzerland.

In addition, from June 1944 on he hid Hungarian Jews in his house in
Buda, including the poet Gabor Devecseri and his family

At the end of December 1944 a group of Arrow Cross members attacked
and pillaged the Swedish mission. The Minister, Carl Ingvar Danielsson,
was lucky to escape with his life. He and 5 colleagues were given
shelter in the building occupied by the Swiss mission. Harald Feller
lodged them for several weeks, which was not without risk : Sweden
represented Soviet interests and was therefore directly threatened by
the Arrow Cross organisation. Harald Feller later supplied the Swedes
with false Swiss passports.

William
FRANCKEN (1998)
Laure FRANCKEN (1998)As a country doctor, William Francken (1889-1962) owned a
chalet in Novel above Saint-Gingolph in Haute-Savoie. This was where he
and his wife provided the numerous Jews who were trying to get into
Switzerland with care and support. The couple accompanied some of them
as far as the border. Most of their rescue effortsactions took place in
1942.

Jean-Edouard
FRIEDRICH (1999)Jean-Edouard Friedrich, who
was born in 1912 and now lives in La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland, was
a member of the delegation of the International Committee of the Red
Cross to Berlin. This delegation, which was opened in 1940, was
responsible for an area extending over the entire territory of the Third
Reich, including the General Government, and the occupied countries, in
particular the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

Friedrich helped several Jews escape to Switzerland. He obtained
papers for a young couple and accompanied them to the Swiss border. He
also led a young woman from Stuttgart, where he was on mission, to passeurs
who were to take her to Switzerland. The German police intercepted them
at the border. Friedrich drew the Germans' attention to him and allowed
himself to be captured so that the fugitives could escape to
Switzerland.

Albert
GROSS (1989)
Abbot Albert Gross (1904-1975) was delegated by the Bishop of Fribourg
and the Catholic aid organisation Caritas to provide internees in France
with spiritual help. It was in this context that he stayed in the
internment camp of Gurs in the Pyrenees in 1942 and 1943.

When the deportation
convoys were set up from August 1942 onwards – some 3,000 Jews who had
been interned in Gurs perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor – he
saved several Jews from deportation, among them Georges Wadnaï, who
later worked as a rabbi in Lausanne.

Paul
GRÜNINGER (1971)
Originally trained to become a schoolmaster, Paul Grüninger (1891-1972)
became commander of the St.Gallen police force, which he had joined in
1919. After the Austrian Anschluss (March 11, 1938), he applied the
federal directives in a way that was tantamount to authoriszing the
entry into Switzerland of all the Jews who were looking for a refuge in
the border canton of St.Gallen.

On August 19, 1938, the
Swiss border was hermetically sealed for Jews escaping from Austria.
Paul Grüninger opposed this decision in vain. From that moment on, he
chose to ignore the federal directives. He falsified official documents
to prevent expulsions. He sent writs of summons to appear in court and
invitations to inmates atof the Dachau concentration camp to allowmake
them to come to Switzerland. He closed his eyes to fake visas. Let us
hear the testimony of one Hellmut R., who had arrived from Vienna just
before Christmas 1938 and was not sent back by Paul Grüninger:

«Several people advised me
to write a letter to Commander Grüninger. (…) I begged him to do
everything to save my parents. He replied by return of post that he was
not in a position to grant them a visa. But he sent me a
"summons" for them to appear at a "hearing" in his
office in St.Gallen. My parents used their last pennies to buy railway
tickets and, thanks to this official document, were able to leave
Austria and enter Switzerland. The Commander made sure that I found my
parents at once and he granted them a permit to stay on.» (Stefan
Keller, Grüningers Fall – Geschichten von Flucht und Hilfe, Zürich,
1993, S. 111-112)

Paul Grüninger was
suspended from his duties in April 1939, then dismissed from the
service. Late in 1940, the St.Gallen District Court fined him on the
grounds of a violatingon of official duties – a ruling it reviewed in
1995.

It is impossible to
determine precisely how many Jews this police commander saved. He
himself put their number at 2,000, then at 3,000. A book by Stefan
Keller, then a film by Richard Dindo – both entitled Grüningers Fall
– have contributed towards making Paul Grüninger's fate better known.

Hildegard
GUTZWILLER (1995)
A member of the Order of the Sacred Heart, Sister Hildegard Gutzwiller
(1897-1957) entered the Sophianum in Budapest in 1927. Only seven years
later she was appointed Mother Superior of this school, thus assuming
responsibility for a community of some 200 members.

After the German occupation
of Hungary in March 1944 and the beginning of the deportations to
Auschwitz, Jews sought sanctuary in the Sophianum, which enjoyed the
twofold diplomatic protection of Switzerland and the Vatican. A total of
70 refugees – among them 38 Jews – were thus able to hide. They
survived, even though the Sophianum was badly damaged by the
bombardments.

One of the Jewish
survivors, Agnes Klein Van Gorp, testified:

«On several nights, Nazi
hordes tried to enter the convent. Mother Superior Gutzwiller faced them
heroically, and she managed to fend them off. The Deputy Mother Superior
(M. Möller, a Dane) protected us and looked after us. She risked her
own safety and her life to help us.» (Jörg Gutzwiller, Sanfte Macht.
Hildegard Gutzwiller, eine mutige Christin, die Juden rettete, Freiburg
and Konstanz, 1998, Spage. 15).

Anne-Marie
IM HOF, née PIGUET (1990)
Born in 1916 in the Vallée de Joux, Anne-Marie Piguet entered the
service of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children. To begin with, from June
1942 to January 1943, she worked in the home in Montluel in the
Department of Ain, which accommodated many Jewish and Spanish children
whom Aid to Children had removed from the Rivesaltes internment camp.

In May 1943, after a short
stay at the Toulouse operational centre of the Swiss Red Cross Aid to
Children, she arrived at the castle of La Hille in the Ariège. This
home was host to a number of Jewish children from Germany and Austria
who were either orphaned or separated from their parents. But several of
them had already escaped to Switzerland or Spain,; others had been
deported.

The threat of deportation
persisted, particularly for those who were more than 16 years old.
Anne-Marie Piguet organiszed a clandestine route to Switzerland through
the Risoux and her native Vallée de Joux. Nine of her protégés from
the castle of La Hille took advantage of it. They travelled in two
groups, inthrough a France completely occupied by the Germans. They
reached Switzerland safe and sound, with the help of two Frenchwomen who
lived near the border, the Cordier sisters.

Another Swiss woman who
worked at La Hille castle, Gret Tobler, returned to Switzerland late in
1943. She secretly took two children with her. Anne-Marie Im Hof-Piguet,
who lives near Berne, has recounted her experience in the service of the
Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children in a book entitled La filière. En
France occupée 1942-1944 (1985).

Frieda
IMPEKOVEN, née KOBLER (1966)
Frieda Kobler, born in 1880, had married the writer and actor Toni
Impekoven, and lived in Frankfurt/Main during the Second World War II.
She hid Jewish men and women at her home.

Jeanne
LAVERGNAT (1998)
Arthur LAVERGNAT (1998)
Arthur and Jeanne Lavergnat let numerous groups of Jewish children and
other refugees use their market-gardening farm near the French/Swiss
border as a half-way house during their escape.

Carl
LUTZ (1964)
Gertrud LUTZ, née FRANKHAUSER (1964)
Carl Lutz (1895-1975) deserves very particular mention. As the first
Swiss national who was elevated to the rank of Righteous among the
Nations in 1964, he – aided by his wife and his helpers – saved
about 62,000 Hungarian Jews after the German occupation of March 1944.
Previously, he had helped some 10,000 to emigrate to Palestine.

Vice-Consul Carl Lutz had
been in charge of the Department of the foreign interests of the Swiss
Legation since his arrival in early 1942; in particular, he looked after
the interests of the United Kingdom and the United States. This function
enabled him to issue protective letters for holders of Palestinian
certificates (an authorizsation to immigrate, countersigned by the
British authorities) who were waiting to emigrate. At the time of the
German occupation, their number was about 8,000, and Carl Lutz pursued
the negotiations with a view to their emigration.

The situation of the Jews,
however, rapidly got worse; deportations to Auschwitz began on May 15,
1944. In these circumstances, Carl Lutz put the Hungarian office of the
Jewish Council for Palestine under Swiss diplomatic protection.
Moreover, he and his staff issued tens of thousands of additional
protective letters which were no longer covered by Palestinian
certificates. The hHolders of these letters were placed in 76 protective
houses, which were for the most part buildings of previous diplomatic
missions of countries whose interests were represented by Switzerland.
Carl Lutz and his superior, the Swiss Minister Maximilian Jaeger, had to
intervene regularly to ensure that this diplomatic protection was
safeguarded and respected. In particular, they had to confront gangs of
the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian pro-Nazis, who tried to seize the Jews
who had found refugeprotection in these protective houses.

Carl Lutz worked in close
cooperation with Friedrich Born, the delegate of the International
Committee of the Red Cross, with the Swede, Raoul Wallenberg, and with
the representatives of the neutral countries and of the Vatican. Late in
1944, when he was no longer able to leave his residence in Buda on
account of the advancing Red Army, his work in Pest was carried on by
Peter Zürcher until the Soviet victory.

Carl Lutz's activities ion
behalffavour of the Jews have now become better known thanks to a book
by Theo Tschuy, Carl Lutz und die Juden von Budapest [Carl Lutz and the
Jews of Budapest] (1995).

Marie
MAIENHOFER (1991)
Marie Maienhofer (1898-1994) took holy orders under the name of Sister
Jeanne Berchmans. She saved the life of a mother and her two children at
Thonon.

Rosa
NÄF (1986)
Rosa Näf (1911-1996), more widely known as Rösli Näf, had worked for
Doctor Albert Schweitzer in Africa for three years and became the first
manageress of the castle of La Hille. Through the impetus of Maurice
Dubois, the Swiss Aid Cartel for Child War Victims had opened that home
to accommodate about one hundred100 Jewish children who were refugees
from Germany and Austria.

After foreign Jews were
beginning to be arrested by the French police in August 1942, Rösli Näf
organiszed an illegal escape into Switzerland for the older children in
her care. The route went through the Aid for Children home of Saint-Cergues-les-Voirons,
which was run by Germaine Hommel and where Renée Farny worked. Ten
children managed to cross the Genevan border close by. Others were
turned back, yet others arrested. A certain number were deported. Once
the route was discovered, the management of the Swiss Red Cross
management forced Rösli Näf, Germaine Hommel, and Renée Farny to
leave their posts. After the war, Rösli Näf settled in Denmark.

René
NODOT (1974)
Born of a Swiss father in 1916 in Bourg-en-Bresse, René Nodot also has
French nationality and currently lives in the region of Lyons. In his
capacity as a functionary of the social service for foreigners in the
Ain Department – and secret adviser to the Swiss General Consulate in
Lyons – he had the Jews listed for deportation warned so that they
couldwere able to escape from their homes. He was an active member of
the Réesistance and also organiszed a route into Switzerland through
Saint-Julien and Collonges-sous-Salève.

Marcel
PASCHE (1992)
Born in 1911 and living at present in Canton Vaud, Marcel Pasche was a
Protestant minister in northern France. He brought Jews from there
towards Switzerland and gave them addresses of trusted people who lived
near the frontier.

Ernest
PRODOLLIET (1982)
Trained as a businessman, Ernest Prodolliet (1905-1984) worked in the
Swiss Consular Agency in Bregenz from 1938; he was in charge of the
passport office. He frequently travelled to St.Gallen and knew Police
Commander Paul Grüninger personally.

In August 1938, the border
was made virtually uncrossable for Jews trying to escape from the former
Austria. According to witness reports, Ernest Prodolliet granted some
300 transit visas through Switzerland to Jews trying to reach Palestine
or other countries. He also played the part of a people smuggler and
persuaded customs officials to let Jews enter without the requisite
documents. In mid-December 1938, a disciplinary enquiry was instituted
against him, and he was recalled to Berne. As a vice-consul in Amsterdam
from the spring of 1939 until late 1942, he again issued forged
certificates to Jews whose deportation was imminent.

Roland
de PURY (1976)
Jacqueline de PURY, née de MONTMOLLIN (1976)
Born in Geneva in 1907, the pastor Roland de Pury preached resistance to
the Vichy government's anti-Semitic policy in his church in the rue
Lanterne in Lyons. With the help of his wife Jacqueline, a native of
Neuchâtel, he hid Jews in his flat. He was arrested by the Gestapo and
held atin the Fort de Montluc for five months.

Fred
REYMOND (1998)Fred Reymond (1907-1999),
who lived in the Vallée de Joux, saved the lives of dozens of people
between 1940 and 1945, including those of Jews and French resistance
fighters. He helped
them cross the French/Swiss border through the forest of Risoux, put
them up in his house, then escorted them to the interior of Switzerland,
where the danger of being turned back was slighter.

He carried out his
smuggling activities within the framework of missions entrusted to him
by the Swiss Army's intelligence service. He mainly had to gather
information in France about German troops. After the war, he was brought
before a court for helping to forge identity papers but. He was
acquitted.

Hans
SCHAFFERT (1967)
A theology student under Karl Barth in Basel, Hans Schaffert served a
training period as a delegate at the Comité inter-mouvements auprès
des évacués, an organiszation of French Protestants that provided aid
for refugees and organiszed escape routes into Spain and Switzerland.
During this period of six months, which he served in the Gurs internment
camp in the Pyrenees, he led Jewish internees to the Spanish border and
directed others towards an escape route into Switzerland.

Back in Switzerland, he
became anone of the associates of Paul Vogt, the «Pastor of the
Refugees». From the autumn of 1942 onwards, Vogt ran a campaign, the
so-called Freiplatzaktion, from which about 1,700 needy refugees were
able to benefit: children, mothers with children, people who were ill,
and elderly people. He found them host families or put them up in homes
or flats.

Martha
SCHMIDT (1994)
Born in Zurich in the beginning of this century, Martha Schmidt was
hired as a governess by the Cohen family in Montpellier. When the family
had to separate for security reasons, Martha Schmidt took the four
daughters with her to a village near St. Etienne where they lived under
false identities. The family reunited after the war, and Martha Schmidt
remained in the Cohen’s service. She adopted a child whose parents
were murdered in Auschwitz.

Sebastian
STEIGER (1993)
Born in 1918 in the region of Basele, where he still lives, this trained
schoolteacher volunteered to join the Swiss Red Cross Aid to Children in
1943. He arrived at the castle of La Hille in the Pyrenees in the
autumn. For just over a year, he taught the children in that home, most
of them Jews from Germany and Austria.

He gave his ID card to a
Jew who had just been summoned by the French police, which facilitated
the Jew's escape to Switzerland along Anne-Marie Piguet's route.

Sebastian Steiger has
recounted his experience and the fate of the roughly 100 children or so
of La Hille in detail in Die Kinder von Schloss La Hille. A film is
being made on the basis of this book, which was published in 1992.

Ernest
WITTWER (1998)
Two Jewish boys found refuge in his father's farm in Haute-Saône.
Ernest Wittwer (1922-1976) helped them cross into Switzerland, which led
to his imprisonment.

Peter
ZÜRCHER (1998)
Peter Zürcher (1914-1975) from Zurich owned a company in Hungary from
1940 on. From 1944 onwards, Carl Lutz, Switzerland's Vice-Consul in
Budapest, employed him in the Department of the foreign interests he was
in charge of from 1944 on. Soon afterwards, Lutz appointed Zürcher his
temporary representative in Pest, anticipating the moment when he would
no longer be able to leave his residence in Buda owing to the fighting.
This was the case from Christmas onwards.

Two interventions in
particular are to Peter Zürcher's credit. He managed to prevent the SS
and gangs of Arrow Cross (Hungarian pro-Nazis) from entering the Pest
ghetto of Pest and from massacring its approximately 70,000 inhabitants:
he had threatened to bring the SS commandant with having him brought
before a court if he carried outhad his plans executed. Later, on
January 8, 1945, the Arrow Cross planned to evacuate mostthe majority of
the Jews who were in the Swiss protective houses within the
international ghetto so as to place them in the big ghetto, deport them,
or liquidate them. Peter Zürcher was alerted and immediately intervened
with Vajna, the Budapest representative of the government of Szálasi,
the leader of the Arrow Cross. He denounced the violations of
international public law and demanded an immediate and definitive end to
the Arrow Cross's attacks on the protective houses and their
inhabitants. Vajna finally yielded.

Thanks to his
interventions, Peter Zürcher succeeded in completing Carl Lutz's work:
that of saving tens of thousands of Jews.

The Task Force :
Switzerland – Second World War of the Federal Department of Foreign
Affairs would like to thank Mr. Herbert Herz, the delegate of the Yad
Vashem memorial of Jerusalem for Switzerland and the Savoy region, as
well as Mr. Marcel Pasche, for the information they have so kindly
provided.